


Wives and Windows

by CharlesIIJaw



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, The Defenestration of Prague, The Thirty Years' War, The second one, a lot of running, angsty fluff, i did take some liberties with history, i think, long names, time caper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 01:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17335853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlesIIJaw/pseuds/CharlesIIJaw
Summary: The Doctor finds her wife in a spot of trouble. Involving some windows, angry Protestants, tired companions, castles, thievery, and maybe some divine intervention.





	Wives and Windows

**Author's Note:**

> I have never written fiction before. As I attempted, my command and understanding of the English language flew out the window. Hopefully, it doesn't show too much! Also, so sorry for any formatting errors. I kind of gave up after the third attempt with the site.  
> I've loved reading all the writings for 13/River and I'd thought I'd give it a try.  
> Some dialogue has been borrowed from the 1600s.  
> Best!  
> I'd also be very happy to continue this, if anyone wished for me to do so.

“Look gang! It’s this one!” The Doctor spins on her heels, beaming at the tired faces of her companions. Yaz smiles weakly and Ryan pulls out his phone from his jacket pocket/

“I don’t have connection.” He grumbles.

“It’s 1618, of course there’s no connection!” Ryan groans and the Doctor frowns. “Alright you lot, what is it? This is a perfectly good castle with perfectly good windows and—“

“Doc, when you said you’d take us on a tour of castles of the world we thought you meant five. Not 83.” Graham says.

“Consecutively.” Yaz pipes in. Graham nods in agreement. 

“Exactly. So maybe, can we put a pause on the castles and find a place with food.”

“And beaches.”

“Yeah, Ryan’s right. Food and beaches.” Graham says.

The Doctor looks crestfallen for a moment, and then smiles back at her companions.

“Back to the TARDIS then! But I want to explore, never been to Bohemia in the 1600s before. It’s worth a quick peek!”

They walk back to the TARDIS as the Doctor explained the smell (They didn’t have sewers yet! Brilliant!), and the clothes and the rickety solemn looking stone buildings. The blue police box was left tightly parked in an alleyway, already muddy and covered with yellowing papers. The ink running in the rain, leaving black tendrils that curved in the echo of words. The door opens and the warmth and hum of the grand blue box beckons in the muddy travelers from the cold. Graham sighs at the warm air and starts to unwind his scarf.

“Alright then, I’m off! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” The Doctor shut the door. It opened almost immediately. “Wait, no. Don’t do that. Just sit there or something not dangerous.” 

There was something about the past that made the Doctor feel alive deep in her bones. The voices and stories of those long dead and long forgotten echoed her twin heartbeats, loud and safe and so familiar is made her ache with the joy and sadness of remembrance. She could remember people—remember what made the world so extraordinary and carry it with her like the guardian of the universe’s greatest secret. She was a museum, a walking relic belonging to and commanding the present. Archeology, she thought may not be so bad.  
A memory, a remnant of curly hair and blinding smiles shadowed her as she wove through the bustle of merchants and shoppers crammed together in too-small streets. This, this was the loneliness of memory- the price of keeping the universe alive in her, dogging her every step and pushed back as far as her shadow. 

The rain was turning into mist now. It stung softly against her face as she walked to the castle, water and mud licking the hem of her coat. It felt nice, the weak sunlight warming her back as the cool mist bathed her face. The castle itself was severe. Its stones sharp and unwelcoming, the metal black in the wet, and water ran from the windows like angry tears.

“Oh.” The Doctor says, placing her hand on the stone of its north wall. It fizzles under her touch, atron energy vibrating in the stone. “Well that’s not right.”

“Excuse me woman, but you can’t be here.” A surly looking man approaches her, hand resting on his blade. The Doctor fumbles with her coat, searching for her psychic paper.

“I assure you, it’s alright I’m with the—“ she glances at the paper and then at the man.

“The delegation. My mistake, it’s right through the doors and then a left up the staircase. God be with you.” He moves to the side and ushers the Doctor through heavy wooden doors.

The Doctor climbs the staircase, keeping a hand on the stone searching for the spark of energy. At the thick double doors she stops, pulling out the sonic. It buzzes and the door creeps open, revealing an ornate room built from dark wood and draped with heavy red and gold fabric. The room was almost bare, barring the large wooden table set in the center, carved with an elegant design.  
She pushes the door open more and treads as quietly and cautiously as she can through the entryway.

“You!” The Doctor freezes. “You are not supposed to be here! This is royal business!”

The Doctor turns slowly to face four angry, rather frilly, men seated at the table, hidden from her in the shadow. “Sorry about that. Just thought I’d pop in. And look! I popped in!” She grins at them. They do not grin back, instead a vein begins to pulse furiously at the temple of the man in the middle. “Alright then, I’m just going to leave then. Gotta look for my… thing.”

“Who are you?” The blonde man splutters, causing his ornate necklace laden with a brilliant red stone to bounce on his chest.

“I’m the Doctor.”

“The Doctor? The doctor of what?” His companion with the rather dangerous looking moustache asks.

“Who are you then?” She echoes, too curious to leave. The blonde man stands up, revealing his impressive height of an unfinished bookshelf. He glares at her with the dignity of a man used to being known.

“I,” He announces, puffing out his chest. “Am Vilém Slavata of Chlum, viceregent to His Majesty Ferdiand the II, King of Bohemia and King of Hungary.”

“Oh.” The Doctor says. “That one. Know him. Bit of a flirt.”

“Jaroslav Borsita von Marinic, representative of His Majesty.” The man with the moustache rises too, stepping towards the Doctor, his hand resting in the lace frill of his collar.

“Jaroslav and Vilém? Oh mates, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” The still-seated young man asks. “Sorry for what?” Jaroslav turns to him with a deep scowl. He opens his mouth to chastise the young man and is promptly cut off by the Doctor.

“Aha! That’s the right question! Good on you!” She walks toward the desk. “I’m sorry—“ a slender finger jabs at Jaroslav’s chest “— because you are wearing white.”

And at that, the room erupts into a world of sound. The echo of a mob’s thundering footsteps and the shouts and yells and clamor chokes through the castle. The regents' freeze, eyes fastening on the heavy doors.

“Well then, that’s my cue!” The Doctor sprints to the corner of the room, ducking under the drapes just as a mob of damp and angry people burst through the doors, shouting and screaming. The men are enveloped by the mob as bodies crowd and fight for space.

“Guilty!”

“Find them!”

“Sign the papers!”

“He’s getting away!”

“Stop!” A man emerges, red-faced and breathing hard. The crowd jostles him as he shouts. “Halt! All of you!” 

And the mob listens, muttering and glaring but nevertheless stopping as the lordly man walks forward, looking down at the figure Vilém hiding under the table. 

“Stand, “ he says, and Vilém rises, pulling Jaroslav to his feet. “You know who I am?” The men nod and the crowd hisses and shouts. And the Doctor grins, there’s simply nothing like hiding in a corner watching a potential coup, and her friends wanted to stay in the TARDIS! “You know why I am here?” He asks, his voice high and icy.

“We will not! Not in the name of our King!” Vilém shouts and the lordly man laughs.

“You will. You will take responsibility for the Letter of Majesty and your role in its inception. You will admit guilt for our persecution or I am not Count Heinrich Matthias Graf von Thurn-Valsassina.”  
The room is almost silent. The throng of defiant angry faces stood tall and ready, and hungry for recognition. The four men look at each other, resigned and solemn. And then Jaroslav Marinic looks into the crowd and sighs.

“We accept responsibility with the knowledge that we will be punished and arrested. May the Virgin help us.”

Count von Thurn steps towards the men, a wry smile on his lips. “Ah, but you are enemies of us and our religion, and have desired to deprive us of our Majesty, and have horribly plagued your Protestant subjects.” He turns toward the crowd, with arms raised. “And were we to keep these men alive, then we would lose the Letter of Majesty and our religion.” They roar for blood and von Thurn beams, holding at a hand, entreating them to wait and then--

“Hello boys, love a fight, but if you could just hand over the stone…” A voice rings out, full of mirth and trouble and familiar as the warmth and rage of blazing suns and the Doctor is still as the mob twists and thunders around her as men burst through the door clad in black with blaster guns--clearly not from the 17th century-- drawn, her own shout knocked from her lungs and—

And there are no words. She knows them all too—has seen the inception of speech, witnessed dancing sounds coaxed into meaning, and whispered them as silent as prayer herself. But now, now there are no words. Nothing but the stillness frozen into her limbs, locking her as focused as a statue, fingers forever reaching to the voice of her long-dead wife.  
There’s something cruel in the way the weak sunlight weaves through her curls as she ducks and whirls sending blasts of light into the chests of her assailants. She’s smiling too, a smile the Doctor recognizes well, blood-red and wild. The man before falls to the ground with a well-placed kick and stays there as she throws an elbow into a throat behind her. The man wheezes and she laughs as he staggers away from her. She smirks at the man in front of her.

“Well then,” she smiles, and the Doctor sways. “Would you like a try too?”

The man laughs at her and reaches for his gun but before he can pull it from its holster she’s grabbed him by his vest and locks her lips firmly on his. He makes a noise between a yelp and a wheeze, eyes wide in astonishment as he falls hard on the wooden floor. River straightens her long figure-hugging dress and looks at her handiwork.

Then Vilém is running and River’s hand seizes his collar and pulls. She snatches the necklace from his neck and shoves it down her shirt, throwing him a wink as he gapes at her. Then another armed man is running at her, grabbing her waist and spinning towards the window and before the Doctor can move River is laughing and his body goes flying through the window.

The sound of breaking glass has people ducking and Vilém is struggling towards River hand stretched toward her and she laughs, a brilliant and beautiful laugh.

“Throw them out the window!” She shouts and the crowd surges forward, pulling Vilém and Jaroslav to the sill as they shout and yell as angry hands push and push until they tip out of the window, robes flourishing and climbing into the mist before feet follow. 

Then River is running towards the door, fighting through the mob as a dazed figure lurches after her and—  
and then in an awful and beautiful moment her eyes find the Doctor’s and the Doctor feels her heart stutter life back into her as she forces herself to look anywhere but into her wife’s eyes and the universe feels like it’s ripping open again and River’s through the door and before the Doctor can think she’s tearing after her, sprinting like her life depends on it because she can’t do this again. She can’t lose her wife.

The Doctor slips down the wet staircase, tripping over her coat and falling hard on stone but she scrambles upright and sprints and then she’s pushing her way through the entrance, scanning desperately. There’s a flash of movement, of light and the sound of a gunshot. River. The Doctor runs, pushing her way through people, barely glancing at the bodies of Jaroslav and Vilém saved from death by a waste pile reeking of excrement, their white clothes stained and soiled. Then she sees her. Gun out and alone, panting heavily as she leans against a church wall.

“River!” The Doctor shouts as she falls into her, her momentum bringing them down hard onto the stone street. And before the Doctor can register that she is here, that she is entangled with her wife (when she really ought not to be) River beams at her.

“Hello, Sweetie.” There’s a jerk of cheap time travel as River slams her hand down onto her wrist and they are gone.

 

Yaz sips her tea slowly in the console room, watching Graham trying to teach Ryan chess. She laughs when Ryan catches her watching and rolls his eyes dramatically.

“Oi! I saw that.” Graham says, glaring at them. Yaz and Ryan just laugh harder and until Yaz stands, moving towards them.

“I’ll play you. I actually know how.” She teases and then Ryan glares while Graham laughs. They’re just setting up the board when Ryan yelps, causing Yaz to dump hot tea all over her.

“What the hell!” Ryan shouts. The Doctor materializes, a strange woman whose arms are locked tightly around her knocks her to the floor and Yaz scrambles to her feet, the chess pieces flying everywhere.

“Doctor!” She shouts, running to pull the strange assailant off of her before she falters. Graham comes up behind her and stills. The Doctor has struggled to her knees, pulling the woman to her in a bone-crushing grip as she sobs into the thick curly hair. The strange woman maneuvers her hands to the Doctor’s back and pulls her closer, a hand stroking her hair. Yaz can see her lips moving but she can’t make out what she’s saying but the Doctor is still sobbing and Yaz is struck by a sudden urge to turn away, to get out of this private moment, to shield her eyes, anything. 

“Come on,” Graham whispers to her, pulling her hand. “Let’s leave them.”

They turn away from this strange reunion, Ryan following them as they sneak away from the room. In the hall, Graham pauses as the Doctor’s laugh—more joyful and as free as they’ve ever heard it—peals through the TARDIS. Yaz looks at his face; lines worn heavy with grief and Ryan’s hand finds Graham’s shoulder. Grace. Yaz thinks as Graham smiles at her. They walk further, finding the kitchen door but before they can close it they hear a shout, meant to sound stern but utterly betrayed by the deep love and affection shot through it.

“River! You bad girl! You caused the Thirty Years’ War!”


End file.
